Biodiversité

A l'aide de micros, des scientifiques enregistrent les sons des écosystèmes naturels. Après les océans et les forêts, une équipe de l'université de Bristol (Royaume-Uni) a dévoilé le monde sonore mystérieux... des mares de la campagne anglaise. Un "orchestre" étonnant.

Au Royaume-Uni, des scientifiques ont confirmé l’effondrement des populations d’insectes volants en observant… les plaques d’immatriculation des automobilistes.
Les organismes de conservation de la nature Kent Wildlife Trust et The Invertebrate Conservation Trust (Buglife) ont publié, le 6 mai, les résultats d’une étude montrant que le nombre d’insectes volants avait diminué de près de 60 % dans le pays, entre 2004 et 2021.

Webinar – Using acoustic indices in environmental and biodiversity research, Dr. Tom Bradfer-Lawrence (RSPB, UK) Acoustic monitoring has an enormous potential for ecosystem research; improving our understanding of the environment and the impacts of anthropogenic pressures on natural systems.

A new study by BirdWatch Ireland, published in the latest issue of its annual scientific journal, Irish Birds, has found that the number of waterbirds wintering in Ireland has declined by 15% over the past five years. More alarming is the comparison over a longer time period, which shows that our wintering waterbirds have declined by almost 500,000 individuals (40%) since the mid-1990’s, a truly shocking finding.

Wildlife ‘firsts’ include Norfolk’s only sighting of a Balearic shearwater and a beetle not seen in Northern Ireland for more than 100 years

A citizen-science survey, led by Kent Wildlife Trust and Buglife, has found that the abundance of flying insects in the UK has plummeted by nearly 60% over the last 17 years; highlighting a worrying trend and the crucial need for insect-focussed conservation research, nationwide.

Studying the at-sea movements and behaviour of juvenile seabirds is logistically challenging, but new technologies now allow tracking birds on their first migration, giving a more complete picture of population-level spatial ecology. We investigated the post-fledging migration of juvenile northern gannets Morus bassanus from the world's largest colony, at Bass Rock, Scotland. We first examined the movements and survival of 38 juveniles over their initial days at sea with GPS precision for up to 53 d post-fledging. We then compared their migration journeys with those of 35 adults tracked with geolocators.

When an expert volunteer is walking through a sunny meadow recording butterflies or searching by torchlight for newts, it can seem a long way from the negotiating halls of Convention on Biological Diversity meetings or from civil servants drafting new legislation.

But trends in species’ abundance, distribution or extinction risk, derived from monitoring and recording schemes, have wide influence in developing and monitoring environmental strategies, agreements and legislation.

Individual species status assessments underpin the lists of priority species within each of the four UK countries. For example, the Environment (Wales) Act 2016 gives Welsh ministers the responsibility ‘maintain and enhance’ species on the Section 7 list. However, many uses of species’ status information come from creating composite measures giving an overview of the status of a taxonomic group, habitat type or of species in general.

Dans le cadre du programme européen Interreg Samarch, une équipe de l’Agence française pour la biodiversité prévoit de suivre les déplacements de poissons migrateurs. Les premiers résultats du terrain valident le protocole de détection et de capture-recapture des poissons concernés.